Midnight in the Garden of White and Trashy

I was driving through, shall we say, an economically challenged neighborhood the other day and had to wonder what in hell the residents were thinking. Does being poor mean tossing out good taste? Does it carry with it some irrational urge to not only save everything but to put it all out in the yard? Every other house it seemed had junk piled around it, lawn furniture and other “goodies” front and center for all to see.

And when I say “junk” I mean “junk”. Old toilets. Piles of lumber. Car parts. Furniture that should long ago have been taken to the dump. And every now and then, evidence that someone had actually tried to make the place feel homey. A sprinkling of flowers….a few pieces of “lawn art”…a birdbath.

I don’t understand it. Do these folks reason with themselves “we’ll use that old toilet for something one day!”? or, “Ain’t  no point throwing away all that busted up lumber! It might come in handy!”. And why in hell would you have your lawn furniture sitting out there with it all? “Merle! Lets go sit out there and look at that pile of car fenders! Whatcha say?”

Then I realized…I grew up in just such a yard!! Well, maybe not quite that bad…but certainly one that stretched the limits of good taste. I blame it on my mom. It was her who put the picnic table, complete with floral umbrella, in the FRONT yard. It was her idea to put the Little Tykes play house on an axis with the front door. It was her who painted everything “redwood”, who decided that some sort of wooden hitching post was the perfect place to hang a pot of begonias. When we got a trampoline, where did it go? The FRONT yard!! Madness! And we weren’t even poor, so this phenomena can’t be laid solely at the feet of those living on meager incomes. (granted, mom and her husband had no clue how to manage money, or what it should be spent on, but they had plenty of it)

And since leaving home, mom has only made it worse. The poorer she gets, the more a spectacle her home becomes. At some point she found an old claw foot tub, and in a moment of shear genius decided it would make a lovely flower bed! It’s right underneath that redwood hitching post. She further decided that the beautiful maple tree in the front yard just wouldn’t be complete without two dozen potted plants sitting around it. (Why not just plant them in the ground??). And those two dozen potted plants are perfectly accented with a piece of driftwood and a large chunk of coal. Nearby, the satellite dish, long ago shut off, is complimented by more potted flowers! Sprinkled throughout are dollar store statues of angels and puppy dogs, a few plastic stones embossed with inspirational sayings, and the requisite “fat lady bending over”.

The flowers and bushes she has are all fine in and of themselves, but they are scattered about with no apparent thought given to their arrangement. The lack of planning makes it impossible to distinguish if something is a weed or a prized specimen.

While there is a perfectly good deck on the back of the house, overlooking a rear yard that is both private and complimented by beautiful flowering dogwood trees, Mom has decided that it is the FRONT yard where the rusty wrought iron patio set and collection of mismatched and faded plastic resin chairs belong.

Lest anyone be tempted to enter this stunning property, and abscond with any of the treasures within, bright “NO TRESPASSING” signs fend off intruders from every corner. (Another item that seems to be a favorite of the economically disadvantaged, as if trespassers are somehow drawn to such spectacles of bad taste). And should anyone wish to direct their motorcar down the gravel and asphalt driveway, they’ll first need to “open the gate” (also known as untying the chain, complete with “no trespassing” sign,  that stretches between two mildewed wooden posts). One must take their security seriously when they serve as Baroness of a White Trash estate!

Why Architectural Digest hasn’t come to photograph her beautiful gardens we may never know. It’s likely that they showed up, and confusing them for a bill collector, she set the dog loose. (Another requirement of a white trash estate seems to be a loud dog that is chained within view of the front door).

Where I Come From, THIS is News…

 

I’m not sure whether to call this charming or sad. It was front page news in my hometown today that a TJ Maxx store had opened.  Which is worse? That it made the front page, or that over 200 people waited in the cold for the doors to open? I’m just not sure…(as always, names are removed to protect the clueless)

 “Well over 200 people waited in the cold and windy weather Sunday morning for the much-anticipated grand opening of a new T.J. Maxx store …“A female customer”, who lives not far from the shopping center, was one of the first customers in line waiting for the nation’s largest off-price retailer to open its doors.

“This is exciting,” she said. “This is the first time I’ve ever been to a T.J. Maxx store.”

The grand opening was set for 10 a.m., and she been waiting at the front of the store for about an hour when the T.J. Maxx store manager announced the doors would open a little early due to the cold and windy weather.”

A Message from Mom

 

So I don’t always have the best cell phone reception in my office. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Apparently I missed a call from my mother this morning, because I just had a new voice mail from her that cracked me up.

 ”Hi handsome! It’s your mommy. I wanted to tell you that Madonna is on the cover of Vanity Fair this month, and I thought you’d want to go out and get yourself a copy.”

God bless her for trying.

Demi Moore’s Fountain Of Youth

 

From the news today: 

“ Demi Moore recently used blood-sucking leeches to “cleanse” and “detoxify,” she said during an appearance Monday on “The Late Show With David Letterman.”

“I’ve always been somebody looking for the cutting edge of things that are for optimizing your health and healing, so just a week ago I was in Austria doing a cleanse and part of the treatment was leech therapy,” she told Letterman.

“These aren’t just swamp leeches, these are highly trained medical leeches,” she said. “These are not just some low-level scavengers; we’re talking high-level blood-suckers.”

Moore said they tested a leech on her belly button before putting several others on different areas of her body. She also said the worms are a fan of a certain type of grooming.

“Leeches don’t like hair, they much prefer a Brazilian,” she said.

Moore said she came away from the treatment feeling good.

“It detoxifies your blood,” she told Letterman. “And they have a little enzyme that when they’re biting down on you, gets released into your blood and generally you bleed for quite a bit. And your health is optimized. It detoxified the blood and I’m feeling detoxified right now.”

They prefer a Brazilian?? What the hell? Exactly what part of her body needed detoxifying?? Did Ashton bring a little something home to her?

Iza Skeered a Midgets!

So it must be a slow news day, because this was front page at my local news (some bits taken out so as not to bore you). Having been to this particular McDonald’s several times, I can say that I would not be surprised at this reaction had one of the employees come around a corner and caught their own reflection in the mirror, but a “little people” phobia is a new one on me.

 “A little person says he encountered a big problem at a fast-food restaurant.

The McDonald’s customer has filed a complaint and retained a lawyer after he said that a restaurant employee screamed and ran away from him because he is a little person. Ethan Wade had made a purchase at the drive-through window of the McDonald’s, and when there was a problem with the order, he went inside. He said one counter employee made it clear that she didn’t like the way he looked. Wade said, “Young lady had her back turned to the counter and when she turned around and spotted me she threw her hands up in the air, started yelling ‘Oh, my gosh! Oh my gosh!’ and ran to the back of the restaurant, continuing to yell as she was in back of the restaurant.” Wade said that the shift manager and store manager apologized after the incident. He said the employee who screamed told a supervisor that she had a phobia of little people. And employee in the franchise office told Wade about what the woman had said. Wade said, “The employee had stated to her, ‘Imagine if you saw a snake or a spider, how would you respond?’ And that employee said she understood that. And I said, ‘That’s unbelievable. I am a human being.’ ” “How could you compare the fear of a snake and spider to a human being? That makes no sense to me,” Wade said. “I’ve seen kids kind of react like that. Understandable. But grown adults to act like that? That’s just not acceptable.” Wade said he wants to make sure all the employees at the restaurant receive disability awareness training, He said, “Little People of America is going to write a letter on my behalf stating that they do some type of disability awareness training.” According to the franchise owner’s statement, all her employees will receive additional training to ensure they serve all customers with respect. Wade said, “You can’t have a phobia of a person. I’m a human being. You can’t have that type of phobia.” Adding insult to injury, Wade said that the restaurant never corrected his order or gave him anything to compensate for it. “I haven’t even gotten anything from that yet,” he said. “You know, I was thinking a coupon or something.”

Damn! Didn’t even give the man a coupon!! What’s this world coming to?? Wonder what the lawyer he has retained will ask for? “Your honor, we feel that free apple pies for life and no more charging for extra nugget sauce will compensate my client for his pain and suffering.”

So I didn’t know that there was such a thing as a phobia of little people. I also didn’t know that, apparently, there is a whole fetish thing going on with them. Don’t believe me? Well…learn all about it the way I did! Do a google image search for “midget” (yeah, yeah, I know that term is politically incorrect) with your safe search turned off. Ya learn something new everyday.

Why Won’t She Just Go Away??

Paris Hilton, famous for no apparent reason, just won’t go away. I can’t understand her mystique. You can find better looking gals at any Wal Mart. Her sex tape was nothing to write home about. She can’t sing or act. And now, she has a line of shoes out.

I hope they make these in size 12 and up, because I can’t see anyone other than a camp drag queen actually spending money on these! Coming soon to a Ross Dress for Less near you, I present the Paris Hilton shoe line:

Don’t Piss me Off if There’s Food Nearby

I have a tendency to throw food when I’m angry. It isn’t a conscious thing, I swear. (well, once it was, but I’m getting to that) And I believe I’ve been able to supress the urge for years now, but in my younger days, you did not want to piss me off if there was food near.

It really started in elementary school.  My lunch table was positioned such that people going to dump their trash had to walk right past me. As a group of younger kids paraded toward the trash cans, I carelessly tossed a receipt over my shoulder and, in a rare display of athletic prowess, managed to slam dunk it into a bowl of tomato soup that one of them was preparing to dump. Now, bear in mind, this kid was in line to throw this soup away, so you would think he would just ignore that my receipt landed on his tray. Oh, but no. He picked the tomato-soup soaked receipt out and threw it back at me. And it landed on my shoulder. On my new WHITE sweater. My new WHITE SHAKER KNIT sweater.

Oh hell no.

I stood up and dumped the remaining tomato soup from his tray right over his head. A teacher whisked us both off to the principal’s office, refusing the poor soup-soaked kid a towel because she wanted the principal to “see what I had done.” Well we get there and the principal himself is at lunch. So we waited, for nearly an hour, the tomato soup slowly clotting on his face, hair and neck. I got “written up” and my mother was called in–big trouble for an elementary student, but the enjoyment of seeing that little punk with soup all over his face for an hour was SOOOOO worth it!

It continued in junior high. I was somehow wrangled into going to the homecoming football game. Now, I am not a sports fan, but at least I understand baseball and basketball enough to appreciate what’s happening out there. Football is another thing. The only way I know what is going on is by waiting to see which side of the stadium screams. So, I’m a bit out of my element at a football game anyway.

So I get there, and my best bud and I take a seat in the stands.  I don’t know how soon after we got there that it started, but some eighth grade bitch behind me decided to start some shit with me. Bear in mind, I grew up in the coalfields of West Virginia, where anyone who knew  proper English, and dared to speak it, was automatically “uppity.” Add to it that I did not fit the typical description of what a man should be–I didn’t hunt, I didn’t fish, I didn’t care for the Toughman Contest, and, as I’ve already pointed out, I knew nothing about football. I gave myself a third strike that night by wearing a natty coral colored oxford with charcoal stripes. So, there I was, an uppity girly man in a pink shirt, attempting to glean some enjoyment from an event I couldn’t possibly have cared less about.

“If I were gay, I wouldn’t advertise it by wearing a pink shirt.” so began the eighth grade bitch’s evening of insults. I resisted the urge to explain the difference between coral and pink, but since she was still wearing a 9-inch poof of bangs held up by Aqua Net, I figured the distinction would be lost on her.  She continued with her lame attempts at insulting me, and I did my level best to ignore it. Junior high is a brutal time, and I had endured worse, and certainly wittier, insults. But S, the friend who had dragged me along to the football game, asked if I was going to put up with her mouth.

Well, of course I wasn’t. Certainly not from some big haired bimbo whose father spent his days selling polyester sectionals and overstuffed recliners. So we went to the concession stand. I ordered a chili dog, loaded it up with mustard and ketchup, and as we walked back to our seats, I told S: “Let her say something else…”

We took our seats, and sure enough, she started in.

“Its not a cookie, mother, it’s a fruit newton!” she quipped in her best hillbilly British accent. It was  a double zinger! She managed, in one sentence, to not only get the “fruit” part in, but made a lame dig at how I talked.

S turned and said, “Why don’t you say it to his face?”

So I turned around, and she did. “It’s not a cookie, mother, its a fruit newton!”

I was enraged.

“Wrong, bitch.” I said, winding my arm back, “It’s a chili dog.” And I let her have it, right up side the head. As mustard rolled down her face, and chunks of processed chili settled into her gravity defying bangs, I walked away. She followed me out of the stands, tapped me on the shoulder, and when I turned around, the chili faced little bitch had the nerve to push me.

Oh hell no.

So I grabbed the clean side of her hair and pulled her head down and bitch slapped her. She reached up, with her scraggly unpolished fingers, and sunk her nails into my neck. We both got three days suspension. But it was so worth it.

My food throwing ways took a hiatus in high school, only to re-emerge once I was in college. One summer, the whole family caravanned in two cars down to the beach. My brother and a friend of his rode with me, while Dad, stepmom, and the littlest brother rode in Dad’s big SUV. I wisely insisted that my passengers put their luggage on dad’s roof rack, as I am fairly certain they had packed a few things that were illegal to transport across state lines. The week at the beach was fairly uneventful. (Drunken skinny dipping and finding a bag of discarded “shrooms” aside) It was on the way home when things got interesting.

We decided on a quick lunch as we left the island, hoping to make it home at a reasonable hour. Dad handed me a few twenties and the list of what those in his car wanted, and I went through the drive through at a Checkers. I placed the rather lengthy order and pulled alongside dad in the parking lot. The three of us in my car took out our food, started eating, and passed the rest to dad’s car. I was a few bites into my chicken sandwich when dad said “Hey, we’re missing a hot dog, do you all have an extra one in there?”

Well, we didn’t. So I dug the receipt out of the bag, realized we had indeed been shorted a dog, and walked up to the order window, still clutching my half eaten chicken sandwich.

“Hi” I told the young woman who offered to help, “We just came through the drive through, and we’re one hot dog short.” I offered the receipt.

“You wanna nutha one?” she said.

“Yes, we ordered three, but there were only two in the bag.”

“Oh ok…$1.06″

“No, no. We paid for three, here’s the receipt,  but we only got two.” She took the receipt.

“Well if iss ona receipt it was inna bag”

“No, it wasn’t. I mean, we ordered about $40 worth of stuff, I can see how something might have been left out.”

“Well I cant juss give ya one for free”

“I don’t expect you to, but I do expect to get what I paid for.”

“You got everything you paid for.”

“You know, is there a manager I can speak to?”

She rolled her eyes and sauntered, at a snail’s pace, back toward the kitchen.  “This man wanna speak to you” I heard her mutter.

And then came the manager.  A tall black woman, 350 pounds if she weighed an ounce, came over to the window. Her hair, an unusual, multi-colored topiary that looked like it had been made of free “weave” samples. She set her hand on the counter…unfurling her 18 inch long turquoise finger nails.

“I hep you?” she asked.

I gave her the cliffs notes version of our missing hot dog.

“If its onya bill, you got it, cause we check it against that when we pack the bags.”

Again, I explained that it had been a very large order, and that it would be easy to make a mistake.

“Sir, we has a system, we don’t make mistakes.” Another look at her hairstyle and her serpentine fingernails revealed that to be a lie, but I let it go. At this point, I was pretty pissed.

“Ma’am, look, I just need another hot dog.”

“Well you aint gettin it unless you pay for it.”

“Ive already paid for it once.”

“No you didnt, now if you wanna pay for one, I get it. If not, move over so we can help these other customers.” A small line had formed behind me, which she gestured to with a wave of her ghetto fabulous manicure.

“Lady, are you calling me a liar? Because if I wanted to ’take’ you for something free,  I think I’d shoot a little higher than a 99 cent hot dog.”

She put a hand on her rather ample hip….turquise fingernails stretching toward her knee. “Do you want it or not?” and then…she rolled her eyes, and I was done.

“No, bitch, I don’t want it.”

“What did you say to me?” The  other hand went up. I swear her fingernails hit the ceiling.

“I said, I don’t want your damn hot dog, bitch.” and then I remembered, there in my hand, was the half eaten chicken sandwich, and before I could help myself, it happened. I pulled the bun apart, and shouted, “And I don’t want this EITHER!” And I threw the whole thing across the counter, mayonnaise side first. She was helpless to dodge it. Her shear size made her an impossibly easy target. Her hands had been rendered useless by the fingernails, so my chicken sandwich landed directly below her breasts and adhered to her loudly printed top.  The top of the bun smacked her FUPA and bounced off into the floor. I turned and left, as the crowd behind me laughed and the manager shouted obscenities.

So I ended up making the drive home with no more sustinence than a few bites of the ill fated chicken sandwich, but the look on her face as the chicken patty landed was so worth it!

Bring out the Crazy People

You know, Julia is right. We’ve all got crazy people in the family and we’re damned lucky if it’s only on one side. Now I could, and given time, probably will, fill these pages with family stories that sound like the script had “Roseanne”  been on Showtime.  My family is full of members who have “done time”, been to rehab, spent time in the “looney bin”, and who are generally what could most politely be called “eccentric.” But their stories are for another time…today I bring you these crazies:

(from dListed)

“25-year-old Ricardo Jose Faulk turned himself into police after he was accused of jacking off in a Clackamas, Orgeon Target store and throwing his load on a woman. What’s worse is the woman’s 3-year-old was with her at the time of the “shooting.” The woman immediately noticed the hot jizz on her leg and immediately went to security. Ricardo quickly left the store, but turned himself in after he learned police were looking for him. He was charged with misdemeanor harassment and later released. He was also tested for STDs.”

Do you suppose he considered her a MILF? Or was this season’s Mossimo collection just that HOT!?But if that doesn’t strike you as crazy, how’s this one from the associated press?:

“WICHITA, Kan. - Authorities are considering charges in the bizarre case of a woman who sat on her boyfriend’s toilet for two years — so long that her body was stuck to the seat by the time the boyfriend finally called police.

Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said it appeared the 35-year-old Ness City woman’s skin had grown around the seat. She initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.

“We pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital,” Whipple said. “The hospital removed it.”

Whipple said investigators planned to present their report Wednesday to the county attorney, who will determine whether any charges should be filed against the woman’s 36-year-old boyfriend.

“She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body,” Whipple said. “It is hard to imagine. … I still have a hard time imagining it myself.”

He told investigators he brought his girlfriend food and water, and asked her every day to come out of the bathroom.

“And her reply would be, `Maybe tomorrow,’” Whipple said. “According to him, she did not want to leave the bathroom.”

The boyfriend called police on Feb. 27 to report that “there was something wrong with his girlfriend,” Whipple said, adding that he never explained why it took him two years to call.

Police found the clothed woman sitting on the toilet, her sweat pants down to her mid-thigh. She was “somewhat disoriented,” and her legs looked like they had atrophied, Whipple said.

“She said that she didn’t need any help, that she was OK and did not want to leave,” he said.

She was reported in fair condition at a hospital in Wichita, about 150 miles southeast of Ness City. Whipple said she has refused to cooperate with medical providers or law enforcement investigators.

Authorities said they did not know if she was mentally or physically disabled.

Police have declined to release the couple’s names, but the house where authorities say the incident happened is listed in public records as the residence of Kory McFarren. No one answered his home phone number.

The case has been the buzz of Ness City, said James Ellis, a neighbor.

“I don’t think anybody can make any sense out of it,” he said.

Ellis said he had known the woman since she was a child but that he had not seen her for at least six years.

He said she had a tough childhood after her mother died at a young age and apparently was usually kept inside the house as she grew up. At one time the woman worked for a long-term care facility, he said, but he did not know what kind of work she did there.

“It really doesn’t surprise me,” Ellis said. “What surprises me is somebody wasn’t called in a bit earlier.”

WTF?? TWO YEARS? Her ass sat there for two years and only then did he think to call for help??  And how funny is it that the sheriff responding to this toilet catastrophe is named Whipple??? As he tried to pry her ass off the toilet, did he remind her not to squeeze the Charmin?

Someone Shit in the Pool

Somehow, I just got wrangled into serving a third term on the board of the Vinyl Village Homeowner’s Association. It’s a thankless job. We get burdened with complaints about barking dogs, questioned about “just what we plan to do about that leaking sprinkler head”, and bombarded with emails filled with financial statements, requests to erect tool sheds, and complaints about stolen flags and Christmas wreaths. But someone must protect our property values, and so here I am.

Trying to get the neighborhood to show any interest in anything is tough. Few aside from the board members show up for neighborhood clean up day. Our annual meetings are generally attended by retirees, newcomers, and people who have been waiting eleven months to blow up at someone over “these damned grass clippings that keep getting tossed over my fence!”.  We barely have enough for a vote, ever.

But that all changed when someone shit in the pool.

At the end of one of our cul de sacs sits the jewel of the neighborhood…our Junior Olympic pool and vinyl clad cabana. It really is quite nice, and is a great place to stave off the heat in the summer. Generally, you see the same five or six families using it. And, generally, another five or six families show up just often enough to abuse it. (I mean, really, folks, is the neighborhood poolhouse really the place to bring your clippers and get a hair cut??)  Once or twice a season, teenagers will steal the emergency phone from the poolhouse, an unthinkable crime given that it leaves them with no way to order pizza or call their friends to join them.  Occasionally, someone will hand out the combination to their friends (or their daycare center…thanks, I really want to swim with 40 toddlers!). But last summer was the worst.

The call went out mid-day. The pool man came by to do his normal maintenance and discovered a turd floating near the steps. The pool had to be closed, $300 worth of chemicals dumped in it to shock away any bacteria, and it would be two days before the pH of the water returned to normal.

A neighborhood notice was put together, and signs placed at the gates. “Make sure young children are wearing swim diapers!”

The pool reopened, and a few days passed. A member of the pool committee opened the pool and discovered another bowel movement that had settled onto the steps.

Another $300 dollars was spent, and another two days passed with the pool closed. The curious timing of the second turd, not present at closing the night before, but there in the morning, prompted us all to believe that there was more to it than a leaky diaper. Effective immediately, the vinyl villagers were required to sign in when they entered the pool. Those under 18 had to have a parent present.

Neighbors got angry. “What are we spending this money for if we can’t use the pool?” “My kids arent the poopers, why should they be punished?”

A meeting was called. Signs went up at the entrances, emails were sent. On the afternoon of the meeting, just hours before we would all convene, the pool man found another floater. The third in two weeks.  Again, the pool was closed.

An angry mob of villagers descended on the pools parking lot that night. There were easily more in attendance than had been at all of our previous meetings combined. The President of the HOA explained why we felt that these were intentional acts of vandalism, stressed that it had cost us all nearly $1000 now, and how we all had to work together to stop it.

Most of the folks in attendance felt the new rules were a good step. Others seemed put off by the idea of having to accompany their children at the pool. Someone recommended having the most recent piece of fecal matter DNA tested so the culprit could be found. Another suggested that racoons could be responsible. The president showed the rather large floater to the crowd to dispel that idea.

Voices were raised. People started talking over each other. One particularly obnoxious homeowner interrupted the meeting several times, finally shouting “This is how it should be!”

An elderly gentleman, his prosthetic leg fully visible beneath the hem of his polyester, elastic waisted shorts, jumped up, shaking his cane at the interrupter. “This isn’t a dictatorship! We all get a vote here!”

“You better step back!” the interrupter shouted, and two men from the crowd jumped to seperate the two of them.

“Holy shit…” I thought to myself. “a one legged man was about to beat the shit out of someone a third his age over shit in the pool.  I may be among a select few to actually see a one legged man in a butt kickin contest!”

Whoever was responsible, whether it was a teenager who thought it was funny, an abnormal raccoon, or a baby who ate way too much, the third turd was the charm. No more were discovered after that meeting.